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1. Peter Haggard of the California Native Plant Society was the featured speaker at the March meeting of the Southern Humboldt Garden Club. Haggard and his wife, Judy, are the authors of a field guide to insects published by Timber Press.
2. Peter Haggard brought his bee collection to share with the members of the garden club. Bees come in many sizes and have many functions. There are over 40 species of bees native to this area.
Peter Haggard of the California Native Plant Society shared his wealth of knowledge about insects of the Pacific Northwest with the members of the Southern Humboldt Garden Club on Wednesday in Weott.
Haggard and his wife Judy Haggard are authors of the Timber Press Field Guide to Insects of the Pacific Northwest. Haggard’s presentation included slides of the photographs from the book and a few living examples of insect residents of this area,
He produced a couple of wooly worms destined to become moths later on in their life cycle. Wooly worms like to dine on herbaceous annuals and perennials but they are not a problem in the garden, he said. In fact, he said, there are no bad insects. All native insects are good and belong here.
It’s easy to tell the sex of a moth. Male moths have longer antennae.
Haggard brought his bee collection to share. There are 40 different kinds of bees native to this area, some small and some rather large. There are over 1,600 different kinds of bees native to the state, making California a special place, bee-wise. Haggard said that almost no one can remember them all.
He said also that there is almost no difference in appearance between bees and wasps. But their behavior is very different. Wasps kill other insects to feed to their young while bees raise their young on a diet of nectar and honey. Male wasps don’t have much to do beyond fertilizing female wasps, but female wasps work so hard at collecting pollen, building nests and producing babies that their wings get worn down by the end of their season and they get eaten because they can’t fly away from predators.
Bumble bees only live a year, but honey bees live longer. Bumble bees put their nests underground and when you are turning the soil, if you come on a collection of small black eggs in the soil, you may have discovered a bumble bee nest.
Leaf cutter bees can be recognized by their tails, which point up instead of down as is the case in most other bees. They can cut perfect circles out of roses and knit the circles into a tube into which they lay their eggs. If you find one on the ground, it will look a bit like a rolled cigarette.
Carpenter bees drill holes in wood, not because they eat wood, but because they need a place to lay their eggs and raise their young. This is not common practice among bees, most of whom prefer to occupy already drilled holes.
Haggard showed photos of some of the many kinds of beetles that inhabit this area. Almost everyone has seen the iridescent green wood boring beetles in the garden and the lady bug beetles that love to eat aphids. Not all lady bug beetles have dots, but all have stripes on their shoulders. Tiger beetles are more likely to be found along the river banks
The large, shiny black predacious ground beetle is welcome in any garden because they eat the snails and slugs. They are built so that they can get their little heads far enough inside a snail shell to feast on the fresh escargot. They are susceptible to the kinds of poison some people use in their garden so if you want them around, don’t use poison. Haggard recommended trying to attract pest eating insects to the garden instead.
He also said that diatomaceous earth was not good for those insects that undergo a larval stage and he didn’t recommend using it in the garden. It’s better to attract some snail-eating beetles.
The June beetle, one of the bigger beetles, cries like a baby when touched or intimidated. Carrion beetles will bury a dead mouse or dead snake and the so-called Mosquito Hawk beetles don’t prey on mosquitos.
Peter Haggard has been interested in insects since he was a boy. He started photographing insects in 1990 and has amassed a large collection of photographs and an extensive database of information about each insect. The book he and his wife, Judy, wrote describes more than 450 species of common insects inhabiting the area from San Francisco north to British Columbia. Judy Haggard is a consulting biologist.
Their garden in Willow Creek is filled with plants and trees that attract a wide variety of insects. They follow the life cycles of all the insects that visit their garden and keep track of the comings and goings of all the insects that live in their environment. Their book is entitled Insects of the Pacific Northwest and is published by Timber Press.
